


None So Poor

by Experi



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Everybody Dies, F/M, except handmaid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 01:08:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Experi/pseuds/Experi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Psiioniic is no stranger to death by now, and she feels an affinity for him as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	None So Poor

_then ii_

_and you_

_and all of u2_

_fell down._

"We're going to die," he whispers, sitting against the wall, not looking at the woman who suddenly appeared. She nods agreement. "Yes." He shakes his head and laughs ruefully, because there's nothing else he can do about it. He's already seen the deaths of all his friends in his head. Now it's just time for it to happen in reality. The Psiionic's been expecting the Handmaid. He looks up at her through bichromatic eyes. "You're a bit early, aren't you? Unless you've come to take me, which I think is just me being hopeful." The Handmaid shakes her head, adding an "I'm afraid not". She offers him a pat on the head- it is not often she makes physical contact in a comforting sense, but it is equally rare to find someone who welcomes her as a friend instead of a demon. She supposes it to be expected from someone who hears the dead whisper, that he would feel kinship with death's servant, but it's nice. "Your time will not come for a while, and I am sorry." She truly is, because she has seen the end of his life, and it is far-off and painful. He sighs. "I figured."

"Nothing is ever easy for children of death." The Handmaid says, before she disappears from the cell.

She will be back.

She will have never really left.

The Psiionic is reacquainted with death only a few hours after she left. The sun rose and the Signless- now the Sufferer- was hung to burn. To be made an example of.

And the yellowblood would not stand for it.

It was his mistake. His anger and desperation- _no you can't be doing this I won't let you the visions aren't allowed to happen like this_ \- allowed a trickle of his psionics beyond the barriers imposed upon him. It's difficult to keep the strongest psionic of the era under control, regardless of your drugs and physical restraints.

And so, against the quiet pleas of the Dolorosa next to him, he breaks rank. He breaks rank and with a slight flicker of red and blue the cuffs laying on his wrists are broken as well and he's running through the crowd he's free for now but he doesn't realize this means he could escape because he's too focused on his friend whose wrists are burning and-

His transgression was noted and dispatched of.

Orders were given that a subjuggulator was only too happy to comply with and after a shark crack to the back of his head, the Psiionic falls to the ground. The Condescension murmurs happily- what intrigue, she will enjoy breaking him in as her Helmsman- but no attention is paid because _they can't kill him no._

Only they _can_ kill him, and the Handmaiden comes to herald as such. She steps gracefully through the crowd, which parts for her although they cannot see her. The demoness stops at the front edge of the crowd, next to a puddle of yellow blood and a struggle to stay awake. "Sleep," she says, bending over and placing her hand over the spot of yellow trickling down his neck.

"Please, let him-" His voice cracks, and she shakes her head.

"It hurts to care." She tells him instead, before dropping him into unconsciousness. She finds herself prone to kindness with this troll because she does, in a strange, human way, pity the Psiionic. He is, after all, utterly pitiable, but her job does not allow for pity. She stands and makes her way over the the Signless. He cannot see her. She holds the side of his face still with the hand that is blotched in yellow, and kisses the Sufferer. She breathes death into him, and then they are both gone.

Some cry.

Some laugh.

All the same, the Handmaid closes another chapter in history.

She repeats the task again much later, in a similarly hectic way.

This time, she stands in a starship.

There's noise, so much noise that drills inside her brain and lodges there. Alarms, screaming, shouts, the noises of other lowbloods on the ship approaching death. She will get to them later, but right now she will extend to the pilot the small kindness of him being the first to die. A flicker of rainbow magic to silence the inconvenience and sounds become muted, time slows to an ooze around her.

The engine room is no better than the outside, a flashing array of colours and screens and Her Imperial Condescension screaming something to no one.

The Handmaid has no patience for this. Time stops in the room, despite the Condesce's commands to hurry. The muted red and blue of the computer screens cast a sickly glow over the waters flooded into the room. She floats above the sea, feet leaving almost-ripples behind. A tap on the brow of the suspended pilot brings him out of the frozen time and into her own continuum. "Helmsman."

He moves his head to look at her. She takes his goggles off.

"Do you remember me?"

The Helmsman blinks the blood out of his eyes. "Not... really." His voice is hoarse from lack of use.

"I am the Handmaid of death." She's not surprised he forgot. Over a thousand sweeps as a ship's computer does not do much for the psyche.

"You're here to kill me?"

"Yes."

"Thank you." She quirks an eyebrow. "You thank me?" While the Psiionic may have welcomed her, she did not expect the same from the Helmsman.

"There was something to do with dying... I needed to find someone. I don't remember who." She nods.

"There are dream bubbles. You will find your friends."

"What about you?"

She shook her head. "I don't die for a long while. I have no friends to find."

The Helmsman coughs out a laugh, spattering blood down his shirt. "Well, you can always find me when you do."

The Handmaid smiles. "That I can."

She holds has face and kisses him as well, although this time it is not out of respect for what he has done. It is out of kindness for who he is.

The Helmsman dies, and she places the goggles back onto his body. No need to leave things disturbed. She floats out of the room, unfreezing time as she goes, because the Vast Glub has left her much more work to be done on this ship, and she has wasted enough time with emotion.

**Author's Note:**

> handmaid likes kissing dudes: the fic  
> xposted from ff.net  
> the only thing I miss from ffnet is line breaks.


End file.
